


All the world dissolves

by Petra



Category: Ashes to Ashes, Promethean Age Series - Elizabeth Bear
Genre: Dream Sex, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-28
Updated: 2010-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 07:37:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All stories are true, or,  there's imaginary lube in the figment of a nightstand by the subconscious construct of a vibrator.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the world dissolves

**Author's Note:**

> [](http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**thatyourefuse**](http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/) set me off accidentally, and I kept on. Predominantly A2A, though Kit has reasons for being there. Predominantly smut as well.

  
The catch is--and Alex isn't going to forget it--that she's asleep, really. She's dreaming in her dream-world that isn't even properly her dream-world, it's Sam Tyler's, or it's someone's, but it's not real, and this is extra levels of not real.

Which explains why she's drinking wine with a lovely blond man just on the cusp of too young for her who talks like he's just walked out of a Renaissance Faire and forgot to leave his accent behind. And, also, because that's the way dreams work--to wit, illogically--Sam Tyler.

"But it isn't really like that," Sam says, as he said to her, about his nonexistent little world. "There's a purpose, and people do grow, and go away. There was, oh, what's his name, Whitfield, who was there when I arrived."

"It is entirely 'like that,'" the blond man--who said, once, in the dream, or before she started dreaming, "Call me Kit, Mistress Drake."

She'd smiled at him and said, "Call me Alex, then. Please."

"No," Alex protests now, because someone has to stand up for the universe that isn't, and Sam's not doing a good enough job. "Nobody here wants us to stagnate, least of all the Guv."

"He wants to stagnate," Kit says, but it's more like he's proposing a premise than making a conclusion.

Sam shakes his head and gives Kit a broad smile. "Now I know you don't know a damn thing about it. He's been changing. He changed every day he worked with me. Maybe slowly, maybe not a lot, but he's not stuck any more than I was. Any more than Alex is." And Sam turns that smile on her, not changing it a whit.

Alex's stomach turns over and clenches hard. She's known since the start that he's a pretty man, that in another situation she might've, if he wanted to, and this is a dream.

A dream in which--she glances at his hand--he obviously isn't married in any meaningful sense of the word.

"I think he's still changing," she says, "though I don't know how much of that's me and how much is--"

Kit holds up a hand. "Don't name him, Alex."

"Are you that afraid of him?" Sam asks, raising his chin as though it's something to fight about, as though he wasn't just giving Kit the sort of look that says "Shag me now or regret it."

"Not of him, but there are hims and hims, and I don't care to talk to any of those while I'm trying to talk to thee." Kit puts his hand over Sam's on the bar, and there's--something hiccups in the reality that is even less reality than the reality that Alex is used to.

"I won't say anything if it means you'll have to go," Alex promises, and then they're both giving her that look. However much dream wine she has or hasn't had, it's time to leave the imaginary bar right the hell now.

"Thou'rt kind," Kit says, and in his mouth it sounds like modern English, or as reasonable as it, at least, not like he's playing some role.

Alex puts that thought aside for later so she can work out who she's dreaming about when she's done with the dream. Right now, it doesn't matter, and she takes them both by the hand and pulls them up the stairs.

They weren't in Luigi's before, but now they're in her dream-flat, or her dream-dream-flat, and she's going to let go of the layers and layers any time now. Probably.

"God, I thought my wallpaper was bad, but that settee is an eyesore," Sam says, laughing, as they get in sight of it.

"Don't look at it, then," Alex says, and kisses him.

He's been drinking scotch, single malt if she doesn't miss her guess, and if he'd been smoking too he'd taste just like Gene.

As it is, Sam puts an arm around her, his fingers splayed warm on the small of her back, and kisses her back, exploring and sweet, as though he's been waiting for it and thinking of it as long as she has.

He can't have been; he's been dead for three years. Or a year and who knows how long.

He doesn't taste dead, and his tongue feels anything but, darting between her lips and teasing her until she presses her thighs together, thinking of pushing his head down and holding him there.

"Ah, you are lovely," Kit says, and Alex wonders which of them he's talking to.

Sam cups her cheek with his hand, tender and warm, then drops the hand on her waist down to her arse. "And you're not so bad yourself."

Alex laughs and reaches out to Kit, who puts an arm around each of them and kisses her. God only knows what he was drinking--something too sweet--but when she runs her hand down his back, he shivers against her and opens his mouth with enough abandon that it makes her groan. He's lithe and wiry, and whatever it is he's wearing--some costume, which goes with how he talks--he's not shy about pressing against her.

And whoever he is, he's been enjoying the everloving hell out of watching them, or out of something, anyway. "How do you get your trousers off?" Alex asks after fumbling around looking for a zip.

"Allow me," Kit says, and lets her go long enough to do something under his--is it a tunic? something like that--and get his pants down.

"That's a fascinating fabric," Sam says. "What year did you wake up in, 1773?"

"More like 1573, an thou must know," Kit says, and kisses Sam before he can say anything else.

Alex blinks and makes an effort not to think about it. Instead, she unfastens her dress--it's easier than any real dress is to undo--and slips her shoes off, then her nylons, watching them kiss the whole time. They look like they're going to devour each other.

"There is a bed, you know," Alex says when Kit gets his hand down Sam's trousers. She doesn't care about the settee's upholstery one tiny bit, but there's space for three in the bed.

"Oh?" Sam's pupils are wide, and Kit has to blink a few times before he can focus. "Oh. Let's do that, then."

Between the living room and the bedroom, they lose various bits of clothing until Alex falls onto the bed with her arms round Sam, his mouth buried in her cleavage and kissing her there, over and over, until he remembers how to work a brassiere and unfastens it to get at her nipples.

Once he gets one of them in his mouth and is using his tongue on it--and she is damned well going to get that man's mouth between her thighs if it's the last thing she manages in this dream--she loses track of what's going on. Until the bed dips beside her, and Kit's kissing her, still overly sweet but more forceful now.

The last time Alex had two men in her bed, she was considerably more drunk than this, and also awake. Which counts for something, surely, on the grand scheme of having to give a damn about consequences. Once she wakes up, Sam will be dead or gone or whatever again, and Kit will be--

Whatever Kit is normally, if he actually exists anywhere at all.

He does look damned familiar, but she can't work out why, and doesn't want to bother just now.

Someone has his hand between her legs, and she grinds down against it, whimpering into Kit's mouth with the rush of sensation. "Let me get my knickers off," she says.

"They're very nice knickers," Sam says, "but--yes. Do."

They give her enough space to kick the damn things off--they rebound off the wardrobe and land God alone knows where, but, dream, it doesn't matter. When she's well and truly naked, they're kissing again, taking care of the last remaining bits of their clothes.

She missed the transition between Kit entirely dressed and Kit entirely undressed at some point. Some niggling voice in the back of her mind wonders what kind of pants go with that outfit, but she's hardly going to kick through the rumpled fabric on the floor to work it out right now, not when Sam's reaching for her in the middle of another hungry kiss.

He doesn't feel the least bit dreamlike in her arms, all elbows and sinew. Not her kind of guy, technically speaking, but he gives her a smile with his eyebrows up and says, "What next?" and for all she's been panting after Gene bloody Hunt for the last few years that haven't happened, she knows damn well he'd never give her that look, like that, like this, and lick his lips.

"Do you do everything as well as you kiss?" she asks, deliberately flirting and moving up the bed, spreading her legs for him.

He shrugs lightly and crawls backward a little ways, keeping his eyes on hers. "You tell me."

Maybe she'll keep Sam, at least as long as he'll stay--until she wakes up. Kit pats him on the shoulder and says, "What wouldst thou?"

It keeps making Alex's brain twitch, that language, and honestly, who talks like that?

"Give me a few minutes to work that out," Sam says, and gets one hand on Alex's hip before he dips down and licks her open, smooth and confident, his eyes still on hers.

Alex groans and laughs at the same time. "Don't think too quickly."

"Don't worry," Sam says, and it's not as though she could, right now, even if she wanted to. Not with the swirl and flick of his tongue, gentle and insistent by turns.

"Ay, the way thy face changes when he does that," Kit says, and kisses her again, his erection warm and firm against her side. "So beautiful."

"Feels bloody beautiful," Alex says, between gasps, and reaches for Kit's cock. He practically purrs when she gets hold of him, though she doesn't have the coordination to make it urgent, or anything more than a series of teases, almost random strokes in between the building waves of dizziness Sam's giving her.

Kit sighs in her ear, then moves to kiss her, and she loses every sense of rhythm she's ever had, but she can't apologize with his lips on hers, and she can't think of the words she'd say even if she could. "Ah, Alex," Kit says, and he's not pushing for more, for anything.

Sam's pushing his tongue into her, his thumb on her clit, and she's going to come soon if he keeps on like that.

Christ, but she misses sensitive modern men sometimes. Enough of those Thatcherite bastards; bring on the dreams.

"Don't stop," she says, because those are words she can remember. "Oh, God--please, don't stop--"

Sam pats her hip like--like someone, not Pete, someone who actually thought something of her once upon a time--and actually listens to her, gives her just what she needs until she comes so hard she's going to feel it in her toes all damn night.

It must be a dream.

She doesn't wake up.

"Oh, fuck," Alex says, when she can, meaning it entirely in a pleasant way for once, and reaches for Sam, tugging on his short hair--not a stylish bloke no matter the decade, that Mr Tyler--and kissing him, salt-sweet-wet and all.

He hums against her mouth and runs his fingers through her hair. "I don't have to ask, do I?" he asks--without entirely asking--and she's damn well keeping him if she can find this dream again.

Alex laughs and runs her hand down his back--thin as a whip, and as subtle--and says, "Doubt it."

Kit nuzzles her ear and gives her a bite on her earlobe that has her shivering all over again. "And hast decided what would please thee?" he asks.

Alex is feeling pleased enough for the moment that she assumes he's talking to Sam. She's had a good start, anyway, and half the point of having two men around is so that they can look after each other while she catches her breath.

"I'm easy," Sam says.

Alex laughs and covers her mouth. "Sorry--sorry. Just--" she reaches up and rubs her thumb over his bottom lip. "I guessed that already, you know."

He rolls his eyes at her. "Not like that, generally. Though there are exceptions to the rule."

She'll never have a chance to ask him while she's awake, so--"Large, self-important, I am the law you bastards exceptions?"

Sam's lips quirk and he goes a bit pink. "Among others. You're not all that large."

"I'm not self-important, either," Alex protests.

"I am," Kit says mildly. "Pride goeth before a fall, they say, and sometimes it goeth after just as well, once the bruises heal." He kisses Sam's cheek. "But thou hast not answered me."

"Alex distracted me," Sam says, and winks at her before he turns to kiss Kit again. "And then she got me thinking about--" he shakes his head. "Bruises."

Alex makes note that her subconscious thinks that Sam Tyler was--is--whichever--a kinky bastard. She makes another note never to ask the Guv about that one, as the answer would probably involve either far, far too much information or none at all. If the man had had other friends, maybe--but the chance of Chris knowing that sort of thing is nil, and Ray wouldn't admit it if he did.

Kit tilts his head to one side and gives Sam a speculative look. "They will be gone by morning like fairy gold."

"And so will you, but that's not stopping me."

"So will you," Alex says.

Sam gives her a wry smile. "Maybe."

"Are you intending to ponder the great mysteries of the universe until dawn steals us from each other?" Kit asks, sounding more impatient.

Sam shakes his head quickly as if he's trying to clear it. "That's not what I had in mind, no. What would you rather do?"

"Christ wept, I have asked thee that same question how many times over, and thou hast the gall to return it me?" Kit laughs. "An thou'rt thus with all thy beloveds, I do not wonder at thy bruises."

"Pigheadedness is its own reward," Sam says, and moves to one side so Alex is between them, poked in either thigh by neglected and enthusiastic genitalia.

She sits up, refusing to be their buffer zone, and gives them both the fiercest glower she can muster. Perhaps she's not all that fierce, but it's better than either of them have managed, and she can't bear another round of "After you," "No, after you." Alex prods them both in the side. "Would one of you shut up and get on his damned knees already?"

Sam laughs so hard his eyes crinkle shut and she wants to kiss him again, or possibly ignore him entirely and straddle Kit just to show him up. Kit looks nearly as amused, though he's quieter about it.

"Yes, miss," Sam says, after a long chortle, and sets himself off again.

Alex waves her finger at him. "You, Sam Tyler, are more bloody trouble than any man on the planet can possibly be worth."

"Thinkest thou he inhabits the same realm as thee?" Kit asks.

That is too much thinking from a man in her bed who hasn't had an orgasm yet. "Right," Alex says, and throws her leg over Kit's hips. "You are a dream. I am not ruddy well here with you--whoever you are--and it is not 1983, and I don't need a damn condom, and--" she wraps her hand around him again, while he gives her an avid and appreciative look, and eases down, feeling like she's only just come and like she's about to do it again. "--And you feel damned amazing."

"That would be the term, under any circumstance but this," Kit says, and whatever that means, she's not going to ask, not when she can ride him instead and shut him up that way.

"Oh," Sam says, and he sounds like he's just had an epiphany, instead of like he's been abandoned to giggle himself into silence. "Oh, is that how you work?"

"What?" Alex asks, bracing herself on the bed with one hand and stroking herself with the other. The sheets are going to be a right mess by the time she wakes up if any of these orgasms are real, even though she's entirely certain she's going to wake up alone. "I--nn--know you don't need an anatomy lesson, Sam, so--what?"

"Just thinking out loud," he says. "I was trying to figure out how you managed the Guv without--well--bruises."

Kit runs his hand over Alex's thigh and gives it a firm squeeze. "Some of us manage all manner of folk without them."

Sam cups Alex's breast and then interlaces his fingers with hers, adding to the tease. "Some of us, maybe, but I was still working it out."

"Not like--mmm--not like this, exactly," Alex says. She runs her fingernails down Kit's chest, over a scar, and he hisses appreciatively.

"And not over his desk, either," Sam says.

Any other man--any other man she could possibly imagine, because she's imagining him--and she'd slap him for that. But--"Not for want of trying, though."

Kit laughs and rocks his hips up a bit faster, going from a tease to something hotter, more desperate. "Thou liest, lady, or thy gentleman has even less taste for the fairer sex than some I might name."

"That's not it," Sam says in unison with Alex, and she gives him a look, wondering how he can be certain.

"It was always better with Annie there to kiss the bruises away," Sam says, and kisses her neck, though she's sure she has no bruise there, wrapping himself warm and sweaty around her back.

"He's--just--" Alex frowns and loses the words for a moment when Sam strokes her faster. "Can't push him around. Or pull him. Calls himself--oh--like that--a lion, but he might as well be the fucking Rock of Ages for how much he'll move."

"Ah," Kit says, and "ahh," on another note entirely. "So that's the trick."

Sam whispers in her ear, "You have to grind away at him little by little," and there's just one entendre there with his cock nudging her arse.

She's not that drunk, and not that sober, and not that awake, and not that dreaming. "There's imaginary lube in the figment of a nightstand by the subconscious construct of a vibrator," Alex tells him, rapping out the syllables before he makes her whimper with another quick rub.

"Before you come again, or after?" he asks.

Kit groans and fists a hand in the sheet. "You'll have me gone in moments if you keep on at this pace."

"After," Alex tells Sam.

"Will you still want the nonexistent lube, then?" he asks.

Alex squeezes Kit with her thighs and all the other muscles she can control and rocks back against Sam. "Fuck, I don't know."

"By all that's holy--" Kit shudders under Alex and she squeezes him again, trying to remember the knack of it with someone whose movements she doesn't entirely control.

Even though she's dreaming him, he's not hers.

Alex lets go a few breaths later, getting Sam's fingers just where she wants them and bringing herself off hard and fast. It's so much better because he's right there, holding her tightly, keeping her from falling. "Oh--God, that was good," she says.

She's amazed she still hasn't woken up, but what the hell. After all the horrible dreams she's had, she deserves a good one.

Kit laughs and pats her hip. "'Twas a splendid ride, dear lady, but thy mount grows weary."

Alex covers her face with her hand for a moment. "I don't like horses well enough to enjoy that metaphor on a visceral level."

"I promise I won't tell you to giddy-up, then," Sam says, and shifts against her so she's got space to get up without hitting him by mistake.

"Best not, no." Alex lets herself flop to one side and lies there for a few moments, catching her breath, before she bothers to think about what they're up to.

Kissing again, when she opens her eyes to see them--and she's still sleeping, praise be--but at some point Sam got into her drawer, because he's got the lube in one hand.

"We're back to the 'What do you want to do?' 'I don't know, what do you want to do?' game, are we?" Alex asks.

"Are we?" Kit asks Sam.

Sam shivers all down his body. "I was looking forward to convincing someone to fuck me," he says, and gives Alex a look that would manage to pass for sad if she couldn't see the smile in his eyes. "But I'm not feeling particularly patient just now."

"Should I smack you around a bit first?" Alex asks, wondering how she'd manage to do it if he took her up on the offer.

Sam squeezes his eyes shut tightly and lifts one hand to cover his mouth. "Don't bloody well tease me any more, all right?"

Kit takes Sam's wrist and tugs his hand down to nibble on his fingers. "Shall I turn onto my stomach for thee?"

"God--stop it." Sam pulls away and sits back on his knees on the end of the bed, breathing hard. "I don't know," he says, and now he looks much sadder.

Far too much like the Sam Alex actually remembers.

"Come here," she says, and reaches for him. She's a bit tender and a lot messy, but when she wakes up she'll be fine anyway, so she may as well go with her impulses. What else are sex dreams for but wrapping her legs around Sam Tyler's waist in one go and holding him inside her while he tries to catch his breath?

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he says in her ear, but that's much better already.

"There, now." Alex kisses his cheek, then swats his arse.

His hips buck, and if it wasn't a dream it might hurt. As it is, it's perfect. "Jesus, Alex."

"Usually I prefer my partners to remember my name, but I'm not sure it's a compliment in your case." She gives him another spank, though the angle's off, and he chuckles. Alex asks him, "Do you still have that lube?"

He presses into her side and she takes it from him, then hands it off to Kit, who's grinning at them. "I would not hurt thee for the world," Kit says, and gives the tube a long look.

No, he's actually reading it to work out what it is.

Alex groans and buries her face in Sam's neck. He smells of sweat, sex, leather, and whiskey. She could have this dream every night and never tire of it. "That makes you the sadist here, you know, Kit," she tells him. "If that's what he wants, then withholding it is cruel."

"A pretty paradox, that." Kit gives Sam a swat that sounds gentle.

Sam laughs in Alex's ear and arches back. "More. Like that. And, God, spread me open. Please."

"Are you always like this, or am I making this up? And if I'm making it up, what am I basing it on?" Alex asks him, though it's not as though a dream of a dead man can answer her properly.

"Not always," Sam says. "Just--oh, yes, please--just on good days."

He's moving with a different rhythm now, and Alex moves to meet him, frowning with concentration. It's Kit's fault--if it's a fault--for fingering Sam, and for taking his request for more of the same to heart regarding the spanking as well. "Is this a good day?" Kit asks.

"One of the best since--nn--" Sam opens his eyes, wide and unseeing for a moment before he focuses on Alex and shifts his weight to one arm.

"Since what?" Alex asks. It's not the best time to find out where he came from to be in her dream, and he can't possibly tell her anything significant she doesn't already know, but she's curious.

"Since things changed," Sam says, too simple an answer.

Alex wants to ask for more information, but he's got his hand between them again, and her subconscious is thoroughly convinced that Sam learns quickly, because she's wet and wide open and he knows just how to touch her to make her breathlessly desperate to come in moments. "Fuck," Alex says.

"I'm trying," Sam says, and meets her eyes again.

That shouldn't be what sets her off, not with all the other things it could be, but it is, and she bites her lip against whatever name she might have said.

To hell with the sheets.

What is she doing, still asleep, still filled up in shuddering thrusts that make her shake and touched like no one's touched her but her own hand, all of it perfect and filthy down to the soundtrack of slippery noises, panting breath, and slapping skin?

"What sets this night apart?" Kit asks.

Alex could tell him: you're here, whoever you are. Sam's here and it's not a nightmare. It's been a long dream and no one has died yet, or turned into something they're not. But those aren't the answers.

Sam shivers and rocks between them faster, staring at Alex's mouth. "Someone's been changing--nn--changing the rules."

"Keats," Alex says, before she remembers that Kit said not to speak his name.

Kit sighs, a noise that doesn't seem to have anything to do with them, and doesn't break his timing, either. "Ah, the crux of the matter. Something must be done about that." He moves his fingers faster, hits harder, something--something gives.

Sam groans and throws his head back and shakes in Alex's arms as he comes. There are no names in that cry, either. The saving grace of the wandering husband--but no, not Sam. Sam doesn't wander; he goes where he wants with his plan in hand.

Alex has a brief flash--not a shift from one dream to another, but just an image--of sharing Gene with him, or him with Gene, or having them share her, and she doesn't have multiple orgasms, not so fast, not like this, but there it is, and there she is, and God--

Which is when she wakes up, panting and sticky clear to her knees, her hand stuffed between her legs.

She stares at her subconscious construct of a ceiling and replays the dream from start to finish, wondering when she acquired such a crush on Sam Tyler, and who in the hell Kit was meant to be. Then the alarm goes, and it's time to shower and be off to work, to face down Gene and wonder what anyone or anything wants from her this time.

Alex smiles at herself in the mirror while she does her makeup. Whatever else happens, at least she'll have a pleasant memory for before she sleeps tonight, and they do say that whatever you fall asleep thinking of, you're more likely to dream about.


End file.
